Monday, April 8, 2013

Finding happiness

Philosopher
Albert Borgmann has written:

Aristotle
recognized that different people find happiness in different ways, some in
pleasure, others in a life of honor and actions, and still others in
contemplating the order of reality and its divine source of movement and
meaning. Wisdom was the skill of being equal to the demands of the
contemplative life, and in wisdom, as Aristotle understood it, the highest
human faculty, the noblest object of inquiry, and the best kind of life, all
became one. (Real American Ethics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 100 referring to Aristotle's Nicomachean
Ethics, Book I)

What
is the path that will lead you to happiness? Where do you find the wisdom to
discern that path? And, if you have the wisdom to see the path, do you have the
courage to follow it?

This
Zen story from Shinichi Hisamatsu about St. Francis seems especially timely in
view of the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis

Francis [is]
dealing with a painful and festering wound. Someone brought Francis a fiercely
hot blade in order to sear the wound, cauterize it and bring healing.

St.
Francis did not welcome the red-hot blade. When fear of that fiery hot blade
set in, Francis dismissed those in the room with him. Then, the story goes,
Francis sat and talked with the blade confessing to that knife his cowardice.
Hisamatsu explains that Francis talked to that blade until he could muster up
the invitation, "Welcome, Sister Fire." Not only did he take the
heat, but he also relinquished all tears and cries of anguish.